Reviving our soils

Greenpeace India’s campaign against chemical fertilisers is also a campaign to bring our soils, destroyed by intense chemical fertiliser usage, back to life. The government through its policies to subsidise and promote chemical fertilisers has played a major role in bringing the situation to this extent. In fact the subsidies to chemical fertilisers, which is Rs. 50,000 crore this year and had gone as high as 1,00,000 crore in 2008-09, is the single largest financial support that our government gives to agriculture every year.

Through this campaign we are trying to expose the contradictions in the government’s policies which on one hand promise agricultural prosperity and food security and on the other kills our soils and threatens the sustainability of our farming. We are also building a powerful network of civil society organisations and farmer movements across the country that will collectively fight for a shift in paradigm of our agriculture.

Campaign Story:

Greenpeace India launched “Living Soils”, a nationwide campaign with a call to implement government policies to save soils from the harmful impacts of chemical fertilizers. This campaign assumes significance in the context of the Central Government acknowledging the agrarian crisis due to soil degradation and initiating a reform in its fertilizer subsidy policy. The campaign plans to organise a series of social audits in selected districts of Assam, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab and Karnataka.

As part of the campaign we are demanding that the government

1. Creates an alternate subsidy system that promotes ecological farming and use of organic soil amendments.

DELHI, India — Call the minister! Ask for a ban on GM crops!
The spot light is on the humble brinjal, but for all for the wrong reasons. The future of all our food is in danger, and it starts with the brinjal. Genetically Modified brinjal a.k...

How do you get a shipment of illegal logs out of the Amazon and to market in São Paolo? A team of Greenpeace activists risked their lives to go undercover to show -- for the first time -- exactly how it's done.

SALTA PROVINCE, Argentina — In Argentina precious forest is being bulldozed at a rate of a soccer pitch area every three minutes - all for soya crops to feed pigs and chickens in Europe and China. We are out to stop this destruction with the...

BANGKOK, Thailand — 7 July 2005 – Greenpeace activists today dumped thousands of papayas at the offices of Thailand’s Department of Agriculture in a protest against the government’s utter disregard for consumer and environmental protection from...

BANGALORE, India — Barely four months ago, Greenpeace astounded a press conference by revealing that farmers in the Narsampet mandal of Warangal district, Andhra Pradesh, had been cheated by agro-chemical giant Monsanto to the tune of over Rupees...

HUBEI, China — In a startling development that may have repurcussions on exports of China's biggest crop, Greenpeace has uncovered genetically engineered (GE) rice, unapproved for human consumption, that appears to have been planted and sold...